Australia VS The World in Fast4Tennis

Hey everybody guys! Jeanni here.

I had a serendipitous opportunity to see the Fast4Tennis exhibition match in Sydney on Monday night. Here’s my story and some tips for the future.

So as it turned out, I didn’t actually have a ticket. I thought it I would have left our Sydney holiday by this time so I had settled for a date on my couch with some popcorn. When I found out I’d still be in Sydney, I was slightly devastated knowing that the event had sold out. With a remote amount of hope, I pinned a tweet on Twitter to see if anyone had a spare … to my surprise, later in the evening the internet gods (a very generous person who goes by the name of Bella) delivered! Thank you Bella wherever you are you made my week!

FanTip: believe in (internet) miracles.

To add to this luck my seat ended up only a few away from some of our HappySlamTennis followers and we were able to share the experience together form the second row! I was SO #happy because meeting up with friends at events like this is what HappySlamTennis is all about! I had planned to live tweet a bit during the event to share the atmosphere via the web for all of you who couldn’t watch or be there, but sadly our internet connection was unreliably patchy.

FanTip: Pack your own pre-paid wi-fi dongle, it’s not always guaranteed to work depending on the network strength but they can often save you from an undesirable first world problem).

Fast4Tennis takes a bit of getting used to but if you caught the recent IPTL action in Asia you’ll know it lives up to it’s name of being fast. The pace also induces a lot of hard hitting and sometimes some creative unorthdox play from the athletes. Gael Monfils and Nick Kyrgios tried their best to outdo each other in air-time with some impressive mid-air shot making.

A great fan bonus with this format is players seem very relaxed and there are a lot of opportunities for legends to grace the court once more. It was a real treat to see Mats Willander and Pat Cash have a hit and I have to say they’ve still got a it!.

There are also plenty of interaction with players as they respond to harmless hecklers and coaching suggestions from the stands.

FanTip: be bold, encourage interaction from players – It was nice to receive a wide smile and a wave from Rafa when a few of us made a cheeky call out to him between points.

Another unusual aspect regarding fan interaction is that there were no line judges so essentially, everyone’s a judge! It was nice to see players being super honest about their calls and getting a little assistance from the crowd. Challenges were ruled by a fan vote – yep! the fans got to decide on whether a ball was in or out by holding up a double sided coloured card – green for in blue for out. Votes were electronically calculated by Hawkeye to determine the final verdict which was shown on the big screen.

The Fast4Tennis event was a great way for Sydney-siders to get the chance to recognise the impending retirement of Aussie legend Leyton Hewitt and he kindly ran a lap of honour as a farewell gesture for fans.

If a Fast4 Event happens near you, you’d be crazy to miss it, you’re guaranteed surprises, giggles and plenty of belly laughs.